


From the Country We Can See the Stars

by hufflepirate



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Angst, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Platonic Cuddling, Roman Rogues Sidequest (Rusty Quill Gaming), Rooftops, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Siblings, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25815757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: After the events of the Roman Rogues oneshot, Sasha talks to her sons and thinks about the past. And the present. And herself. And her kids. It's been an interesting day. (Azus and Riz also have a lot of feelings going on. SUCH a day.) (Rooftop cuddles help though.)
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Everyone
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	From the Country We Can See the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Lights and Cars" by Enter the Haggis.

Sasha waited for Wilde's door to close before she said anything.

"What've you got there?"

"Nothing!" Azus answered, too fast.

"Are you sure?"

"No." Pouting. It was - not her favorite of this particular son's qualities, but he _was,_ after all, still pretty little. Apparently. She was still trying to process the way her children's faces had looked when they got home.

Azus was standing, carefully frozen, where he'd been when she caught him, as if not moving would keep her from seeing him even after he'd been spotted once.

She sighed, climbing down from the windowsill where she'd been seated and opening her arms toward him.

He shot into motion, running into her arms with padding feet that were so familiar and - yeah. Ok. Small. Still small. He tucked his head under her chin, and she thought about how quickly Riz had sprouted from this size to taller than she was. She wasn't sure if it was Rome or just getting older, but the time seemed to go faster and faster as it went along, and the kids might not be as ready as she'd thought they were, but they _were_ still growing fast.

After a long moment, Azus answered the original question, half-muffled by her shirt. "I stole Wilde's hood."

"Well, why'd you do that?"

"Smells like her."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You got _proper_ freaked out today, then, huh?"

"Yeah."

"You wanna talk about it?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

Yup. Yup. That one trick was still working. Good. Azus was still pouting. Less good. But workable, at least.

"Alright," she said, letting go of him. "Roof. Come on."

Azus pulled away from her, raising one eyebrow and perking up immediately. "Really?"

"Really."

Riz was already up on the roof and looked surprised to see them. "Oh! Hi, boss."

"You having trouble sleeping, too?"

"Too?"

She stepped sideways slightly faster than Azus could account for it, leaving him scrambling to hide behind her again.

"Oh," Riz said, "Yeah. That makes sense."

"Yup."

"It does not! I'm really - grown up. And . . . _can_ sleep. And stuff." Azus didn't sound like he was trying particularly hard.

Sasha missed not having a limp. She wished she could sweep dramatically forward to sit on the edge of the roof, but as it was, she just started moving and called it good enough.

Azus scrambled to follow her, but Riz didn't have to scramble anymore, his long, gangly legs making him much faster than she was, when he didn't trip or kick himself in the ankle or both. He'd climbed up here barefoot, which was generally safer these days. Nothing on his feet to hurt when he misjudged his own legs and kicked himself. He sat tentatively beside her and dangled his bare feet over the edge.

Azus hesitated for a moment and then climbed into her lap, like he was still little. Littler. _Little_ little. She wrapped her arms instinctively around him to keep him from falling out of the relatively small space of her lap, and then it was too late to worry about whether this was the right thing or not because it had already happened.

It got quiet, and Sasha tried to remember the last time she had sat in the same place as more than one child without a lot of noise. Riz leaned into her side, twisting at a weird, awkward angle to put his head on her shoulder. She patted the side of his head awkwardly, then put her arm back around Azus.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect Wilde better," Riz said softly.

Azus huddled closer against her, and Sasha wasn't sure if Riz was talking to her or his brother. Bit awkward. Unfortunate. She decided to answer, figuring that as much as she was making this up as she went along, she'd still probably have a better answer. "You all made it home. That's what counts."

Riz's head shifted, as if he were trying specifically not to look at her.

"Hey," she said, a little stronger this time, "I mean it. Protecting each other's a job for _all_ of you. And you _all_ came back in one piece."

"I hope her nose isn't bothering her too much," Riz answered, which at least meant he'd accepted the one point and moved on to a new one.

"It's not," Azus said, "She's _well_ asleep."

"Have you been in other people's rooms again?" Riz asked, appalled.

"Not Amidus's?" She'd need to work with Azus on the lying. It would really be useful if he were better at lying. Not that she was necessarily the best one to teach lying.

"He stole Wilde's hood," she explained, before Riz could think too much about what he might have left out in his own room.

"It _smells_ like her! And I was gonna give it back this time."

"Are you gonna give back my letter?" Riz asked, not missing a beat.

"I already _said_ , I haven't _got_ your letter!"

Sasha cleared her throat, putting on her best boss voice. "Oi! Now's not the time for that. You can worry about your letter once Wilde's concussion is better. If she has one. Which she could, what with a broken nose being a head injury and all."

Azus wailed, and Riz sighed just a split second after she did, mirroring her in a way that made the inside of her chest feel warm and fond.

Azus buried his face into the shoulder Riz wasn't leaning on, and she let him cry there, deciding that not saying anything about it was probably the safer call.

Riz continued to be curled up awkwardly and continued to pointedly not look at her from his weird angle, but she decided to worry about one son at a time. She rubbed Azus's back and didn't bother with the words she'd never been good at to begin with.

Azus was quiet again, half-asleep in his precarious position in her lap, before anyone spoke.

"You know how you said about Zeus being kind of useless, boss?" Riz asked.

"Yeah."

"Do you think all the gods are useless? Because - I've been thinking."

"'Bout what?"

"Gods."

"What about 'em?"

"I just - I keep thinking about how if we hadn't had all those potions, we could've died."

"Wilde had to take two," Azus added sadly, sniffling.

"I know," she said, trying to sound gentle, "You told me while we were eating the eels."

"And it's really not keeping her up?" Riz asked, "I was a bit worried about that."

Azus didn't answer, and Riz lifted his head up, concerned.

"Azus . . ." she said, putting just a little bit of a threat in her voice, careful to keep it at a boss level of threat and not an enemy level of threat.

Azus buried his face harder into her shoulder.

"What did you do?" Riz asked, his voice cracking at the end.

"'S only a little 'f the potion," he muttered, still hiding in her shoulder.

"What potion?" she prompted.

Azus groaned, but when whining did nothing for him, answered, "The sleeping one."

Riz groaned loudly. "Why do you do these things? Do you not have any respect for other people's personal . . . _persons_?"

"She'll be alright, it won't hurt her," Sasha said, "No more of that for you though. Riz'll have to carry yours next time."

Azus sat up, startled. "Wait! What? No! Don't give him my stuff!"

"You've got a bunch of _my_ stuff," Riz grumbled.

"Yeah, alright," Sasha interrupted. "Go check on your sister. Make sure she wakes up if you shake her."

Riz scowled, but climbed to his feet, wobbling a little as he forgot how tall he was now. She reached a hand out instinctively, but luckily didn't need to catch him.

Azus was still tucked up against her. "Are you really gonna give him my stuff?"

"Depends on if _you_ learn to be responsible."

"I can be responsible."

"Guess we'll find out."

"I can."

They settled into silence as Sasha tried to work out exactly how long she ought to sit here before she made Azus go to bed.

Azus spoke before she worked it out.

"Do you think Riz is lying when he says he can remember having brothers and sisters before?"

"Dunno. Probably not."

"Did _I_ have brothers or sisters before?"

"Don't think so."

He went silent again.

"What're you thinking about?"

"We're named for people you used to know, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Were they your family?"

"Yeah. They were."

"D'you have a family before that?"

"I . . . did. Sort of. Not . . . not the same way."

"I only have one."

"I know."

"It's scary thinking about if they died."

Suddenly, she was glad she hadn't decided to go inside yet. "I know that too."

He looked up at her. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Grizzop, that Riz is named after, he died. You know that, 'cause I always light him those candles. But the rest of my family, I dunno if they lived or died. I like to think they lived, and they're just stuck in the future, but I can't prove it. Just have to take it on faith."

"I thought you didn't like faith."

"I don't like _Zeus_. Faith's alright. Or at least, a lot of people I like have faith. And I guess me now. Sort of."

"Faith that our family is gonna be alright?"

She thought for a moment, thinking through her words carefully. "Look . . . you and your siblings train a lot, yeah? That's what you should have faith in. You can always get stronger. You can always get better. And you can protect each other. It's not . . . I'm not saying have so much faith you do something stupid, but there's a reason I teach you lot, yeah? You have to have faith in each other and in the stuff you practiced. You have to have faith that what you know will be there and that your friends will be there. And then you've gotta be careful about all the rest of it."

"Were you careful about the rest of it?"

"Not as much as we should have been. I - might have to tell you about it some time. But not right now." _We were young_ , she'd almost said, and suddenly everything snapped into perspective again, or out of it, maybe, and got disorienting.

"Oh," Azus said sadly, "'Cause I have to go back to bed?"

"Yeah, probably," she answered on autopilot.

"But I had a nightmare. Before I started nicking stuff. I thought maybe the stuff I nicked would help with the nightmares."

She was back to herself. Paying attention. _Attention_. "Well, tomorrow's a day off, so why don't you just give it another go without the nicking, and see how it turns out?"

"I guess."

"And you can give your sister her hood back before you go to bed, since she's probably still awake."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Yeah."

For a moment, he just sat there.

"Go check on her," she prompted, gently, "It'll make you feel better, too. It's alright if sometimes you just wanna check on the people you love."

She could feel Azus raising his chin, steeling himself. "Yeah. Alright. I'll go check. Just in case. If Riz forgot. Gotta - gotta check." He got up carefully, crawling out of her lap and then clambering to his feet farther from the edge of the roof, a show of caution that was, if she admitted it to herself, a little reassuring.

She knew she should go back down and sit on a windowsill inside, where she could watch to make sure Azus followed directions, and probably that the other kids were fine, but she was still - something. Confused. Troubled.

She leaned back, lying down on the roof. The stars above her were bright, like she'd never be used to. They'd seemed awfully bright in Upper London and Paris and Prague and Cairo, and there had been awfully many of them, and it was nothing to how many there were here, farther from a living city than she'd ever been before.

Had her world just been too small, under the ground? Had she grown to fit it too fast? Had it made her too hard? Or were her own kids just too soft? Was _she_ too soft, letting a 12-year-old cuddle up in her lap and pulling the whole team into a group hug when they got home?

The stars shone peacefully, like nothing out in the world was as stormy as her mind.

She'd thought about herself as a child before. She _had_. She'd thought about how different it was watching her own kids train out in the sunshine, laughing and arguing and everything theoretical and distant when they thought about it. She'd thought about how safe they were, how safe she _wanted_ them, here after the Dragoning.

How had they been through so much, lost so much in one big flame, and not become what she was? And did she even want them to? What would she think of her own child self, if that child turned up on her doorstep? And would she mourn for the softness that wasn't there?

She tried to remember being 12, but everything blurred together, everything dark and humming underground, everything fitting into all times and into no times at all.

She heard muffled shouting from beneath her head and decided to just stay up here. The kids could sort things out themselves. Or they couldn't. No use getting a headache over it, either way. Not when they were so _safe_ on top of all the other stuff, so safe that an afternoon of not-safe had been such a shock to them. Not that it hadn't sometimes felt like a shock to her when things went wrong all in a blink. But you had to be expecting traps, and that, at least, hadn't usually been such a shock.

They hadn't been _so_ unsafe, had they? But maybe they had.

They were safe now. She was safe. Her job was keeping _stuff_ safe, and even if it went wrong, it was still just _stuff_. It felt . . . small. Pointless.

She thought of the infinitude of stuff. Dire lobster. Gleaming automata. The opulence of the finest rooms in Paris. The wild, dizzying, incomprehensible possibility of anything in existence finding its way to her fingertips. The relief of the grimy roof and the gargoyles, dirt under her hands and laughter from below. The towering world of Eiffel's Folly, with the city falling to pieces, and that one finally-solid moment in the middle of all that was real and human and important, so close and yet so far from Hamid and Bertie and Brutor and _stuff_.

She hadn't protected the rooms, hadn't cared to or needed to, but she'd protected Hamid plenty of times. She'd tried to protect Bertie, when she had to. It had been worth protecting Hamid and Zolf. It was worth protecting her kids. It was worth it. It was _worth_ it.

She twisted her hand in front of her face, making a motion she half-remembered from one of Hamid's spells, and felt no surprise when it did nothing. She wasn't magical. She wasn't soft. She was just _her_ , and doing her best.

The shouting indoors was louder. More of the kids were awake. Most of the kids, probably. Maybe even all of them.

Well. Probably not Amidus. He could always sleep through anything. And that was something, too.

"I hope you'd like them," she said to everyone and no one, the empty air and the stars. "I think you would. Even if they did have a pretty rough go of their first adventure. I guess on our first adventure we let a whole building get blown up, so I suppose that's fair. Don't think I'm gonna tell them about that one for a while. Unless it would help?"

The stars didn't answer. Time might be going faster and faster, but it was still a one-way trip. "Well, one day you can hear about them, and not just them about you." _Maybe then I'll know who I am_.

Bertus was shouting her name. Well, sort of her name. "Boss!" She was halfway to her feet when she realized he hadn't bothered to climb up here, just to shout out the window.

"Go to sleep!" she shouted back, making her slower-than-she-used-to-be way back to the edge of the roof nearer the good window.

"Don't wanna! Everybody's fighting!"

"Well tell them I said to cut it out!"

"Ok!"

Maybe she was too permissive. Maybe her kids were too soft, too distractable, too fun and happy and unserious.

She took one more look up at the stars before she slid in through the window, half imagining they looked back with the sparkle of familiar eyes who probably, hopefully, would have liked her kids.

If her kids were too soft, it was only what she wanted for them. It fit what she wanted. A better world. A world as good as she could make it, stuck here in the pieces at the end of a nightmare, at the start of an era that hadn't had time to become her own yet.

She waded into the chaos, feeling better about the potential headache of it all than she had in a good long while.


End file.
